Folk Tales of Cambodia — Part 1 (The Statue Brought to Life · The Merchant and the Three Passengers · The Case of the Three Sons · The Three Brothers)
Disclosure: this performance is narrated by AI-generated voices.
Part one — the premiere of a new shelf. Four judicial tales from Cambodia, collected by Léon Feer and published in Cambodge: contes et légendes (Paris, 1895), heard here in a fresh English telling from Feer's French. In The Statue Brought to Life, four students of Taksila — a carpenter, a sculptor, a magician, and one who learned to raise the dead — make a woman together on the road home and quarrel over her, until the king rules who among them is her mother, her husband, her brother, and her father. In The Merchant and the Three Passengers, a musician's playing, a companion's hand-clapping, and a third man's dancing capsize a merchant's boat, and the king divides the loss in fifths. In The Case of the Three Sons, the son who nursed his father through his last illness receives two shares against his married brothers' one. In The Three Brothers, the son who entered religion to make merit for his parents likewise receives two shares. Every judgment is said to conform to "walking in the straight path." The episode opens and closes with its theme, Avian Impressions, heard also briefly between the stories.
Chapters
0:38 The Statue Brought to Life
4:56 The Merchant and the Three Passengers
8:24 The Case of the Three Sons
10:05 The Three Brothers
Two further tales of the book are not read on this shelf, excluded by name after a full reading: Le Voleur et les Quatre Femmes · Les Quatre Hommes Vertueux. No claim of completeness for the book is made.
From Cambodge: contes et légendes, by Léon Feer (Paris, 1895), public domain — Internet Archive cambodgecontese00feergoog; the four tales complete and in book order, in a fresh English telling from Feer's French. Narrated by Orson. Theme: Avian Impressions.
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